University of Oregon Matthew Knight Arena Beach Volleyball Locker Rooms

Making Room for a New Team

When the University of Oregon decided to create dedicated facilities for its beach volleyball program, the project started with a Title IX need and ended with a space the athletes genuinely wanted to be in. The work converted existing office space on the lower level of Matthew Knight Arena into locker rooms, showers, and a player lounge designed around the beach volleyball experience. We partnered with Rowell Brokaw Architects, providing high-performing mechanical, electrical, and plumbing design for the new space.

Designed Around the Sport

Beach volleyball brings sand inside, which created a plumbing challenge that does not come up on most projects. The shower and restroom drains tied into a nearby sump pump system that was not built to handle sand buildup over time. To solve that, we installed a sand interceptor, which is essentially a floor-level tank that collects sand before it reaches the drain system. UO facilities can vacuum it out at the end of each season. It is a simple fix, but one that required recognizing the problem early and designing for it intentionally.

Lighting design was critical to the athlete experience, and we worked closely with RBA and the University of Oregon to get it right. Athletes use the space to prepare before competition, so the lighting at the mirrors had to be practical rather than just aesthetically pleasing. We gathered input directly from the players and selected the fixture types, placement, and controls to meet their needs. As the design evolved, lighting became one of the more detailed scopes on the project, covering the mirror areas, the locker bays with data and power connections, and the entry vestibule, where a mural painted by a local artist became the focal point of the space.

Some of the smallest details are the ones that make a space feel inviting and inspiring. For this project, the trench drain covers in the showers, often not the most visually exciting element, were fabricated with a wave pattern that connected the space to the beach theme and gave the room real character. The athletes noticed. Social media posts from the team after move-in showed the kind of response that tells you the space actually landed with students.

A Foot in the Door

This was a small project with a big impact. UO Athletics had high expectations and a specific vision for how their athletes should experience the space, and delivering on that on time and with positive feedback from the people using the facility every day. This opened a door that a larger, more straightforward project might not have.

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